See You In Hell
by Madness Hamster
Summary: Rose mourns a lot of things that she lost from her old life, Capt. Jack Harkness is just one of them, but at the thought of him there's something niggling in the back of her mind, will she ever return to her home and find out what happened?
1. Prologue

**"See You In Hell"**

**PROLOGUE **

A/N – My second ever Dr Who fic, and my first one that is more than one chapter long! It's set after Doomsday, and is mainly about Rose's reunion with Jack, though the Doctor will turn up eventually :) Dedicated to my Beta (and bestest) Elmo, and to all the rest of the fans out there who are missing Captain Jack.

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"See you in hell."

Those were the last words he had ever said to her.

Rose missed a lot of things now that she was stuck here, in this other dimension, one of those things being Jack. Captain Jack Harkness. His teasing, his energy, hell – even his non-stop flirting with pretty much anything with a pulse and, depending on the planet, some things without. A true 51st century guy, as the Doctor had said.

She hadn't thought of Jack in a long time. The Doctor had told her what had happened on the Game Station – that he'd been killed, and remembering him was just too painful. But after almost a year of moping around over the Doctor she couldn't help thinking of what else she'd lost.

Something about Jack though…some tiny niggling little itching in the back of her mind whenever she allowed herself to think of him. If she had been honest with herself from the start Rose would have known that this was the real reason she'd avoided thinking about him ever since the day he'd…the day of the Daleks.

Sitting here in her modest office in the middle of the Torchwood building, sifting through reports and case files, random pictures and ornaments cluttering her desk, she finally acknowledged that itching.

It was one of those things, like an idea of an idea or a remnant of a dream that would, she knew, disintegrate and disappear if you poked at it, so instead she let it just simmer there, turning back to what she had been doing when the itching had first distracted her.

Strictly speaking, it was the reason she'd thought of him in the first place. The report that lay in front of her was her brief. She was being sent to Cardiff. An unidentified object had been found in the possession of a politician. From the description she had it sounded a lot like the extrapolator. If she was right and that was what it was, Rose was sure that she would have a good laugh at the irony of it being in the hands of another Welsh politician. She already knew that none of them would have any clue what it was though.

With her unique skills gathered with the Doctor part of her job was to vett any and all people in any position of political power within Britain to ensure that they were all human. And they all were, with the quiet exception of the Scottish First Minister. A nice man from the neighbourhood, i.e. Pluto, whose only reason for being in power was because he actually had the best interests of Scotland at heart. In his own words, he 'knew what it was like to be pushed around by the bigger planets', the implication being that those 'bigger planets' were in this case, England.

So she kept it quiet for him and on the odd occasion when she had no clue what kind of alien or alien artefact she was dealing with, he would help her out.

She didn't really need to be re-reading the brief, she'd already read it several times and knew all the important details but before she left for Cardiff the next morning she wanted to make sure she knew absolutely everything there was to know about the case. The more times she read it, the more insistent the niggling in her brain became.

There was nothing new to know. Welsh politician found a strange looking item in an antique store; placed it in his office as an ornamental type thing and since then his office and the offices on either side of him had everything running on full power whether they liked it or not, computers, lights, coffee makers, printers, phones, all going 24-7. The poor maintenance staff had no idea what was going on.

Rose sighed and abruptly closed the file. This was getting her nowhere. The Torchwood researchers had done their job, finding out about it, now all she had to do was retrieve it, bring it back to London and catalogue it. An unlimited source of power in the hands of the Torchwood Institute.

If it had been the old Torchwood in the other place she'd have been far more concerned. As it was, since the Preachers had backed down and allowed the British Government to re-open the project, it had taken a whole new turn. Information and understanding was the focus, rather than profit and warfare. And with her father on the board of directors and herself and various other members of Mickey's group employed there, they ensured that it stayed that way.

Deciding that there was nothing to be gained from staying in the office reading and re-reading some stupid case file in the vain hope that suddenly everything would make sense, she pulled the band out of her thick blonde hair and ran her fingers through it a few times before allowing it to settle round her shoulders and gathering her things. She was exhausted and she had an early train to catch. Besides, maybe a good nights sleep would clear her head.


	2. Cardiff

**"SEE YOU IN HELL"**

**Chapter 1: Cardiff**

A/N – huge thanks to timano for being my first and only review so far!! Glad you liked it, and yes there's going to be more!

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It had taken 3 hours, 2 trains, a bus and directions from a friendly old couple, but Rose finally stood outside the Welsh parliamentary offices. Travelling by TARDIS had been so much easier, even with the Doctor's tendency to end up in the wrong time and place.

She strode into the building, going through her story in her head. Obviously the existence of an organisation based in London which dealt with anything related to aliens from space was somewhat hush-hush so she couldn't just wander in with a 'hi, I'm Rose Tyler from the Torchwood Institute in London, we think you may have a power source that somehow managed to make its way to Earth from a different planet, mind if I take it off your hands so we can study it and see exactly what it does?'

Yeah, because that would work. She did miss the days when she would have just burst in and grabbed what she wanted, her and the Doctor, with matching grins on their faces and a hasty apology yelled over her shoulder as an afterthought for the state they left the door in. Torchwood, however required a little more tact from their employees.

She smiled at the slightly harassed looking man behind the reception desk, 'hi, my name is Rose Tyler, I've got an interview with Daniel Bowen.'

'Ah yes,' was the reply, 'just go through and he'll be there in a moment.'

With a 'thanks', Rose made her way past the desk and followed the names on the doors until she found the right one.

Letting herself in, she smiled slightly at the room before her, this man had more clutter in his office than she did. She should take a picture to send to Pete, he was always complaining about how no-one would be able to work surrounded by so much junk.

It took a moment for her eyes to pick out what she was looking for and from one glance at the flat metal board with its raised circles – which had always reminded her of lego blocks – she knew that it was exactly what she'd thought.

This one was far more rusted than the one in her own world though, tarnished and battered, it was easy to see why people had thought it was antique.

Smoothing the pants suit she still wasn't used to wearing even after a whole 18 months of working for Torchwood and wearing one 5 days a week, she closed the door quietly behind her and moved forward to run her hands over the dented metal.

Mr Bowen had placed it on a shelf, leaning against the wall. It was a far cry from the pristine one she had seen, and somehow the wear and tear gave it an eerie sort of quality that she couldn't really define. You knew from first sight that this item had a history, and the fact that it was so difficult for anyone on Earth to be able to figure out what the hell it was made that history all the more intriguing and made the extrapolator all the more interesting.

She was just about to lift it from its shelf when the door clicked behind her and she spun guiltily, unwilling to be caught fondling this mans ornaments.

'Miss Tyler?' The slim dark haired man extended his hand, walking towards her with a smile.

She matched his smile with one of her own, shaking his hand politely, 'yes, hi, it's nice to meet you.'

'You too, please take a seat,' he gestured towards the slightly dilapidated looking chair in front of his desk as he eased himself into an only slightly less worse for wear seat behind it, 'I must say, you're not quite what I was expecting.'

'Yeah', she replied with a grin, 'I get that a lot, people don't really expect a politics student to be a ditzy looking blonde.'

'It is a…break from the norm, shall we say. Anyway, to business. What exactly was it you wanted to speak to me about?'

Here was the bit Rose hated. Obviously she couldn't just tell him that she wanted to buy his new antique for a top secret government project, so she had to pretend to discuss politics then oh-so-casually notice his interesting looking decoration, which of course a friend of hers would 'absolutely adore', and then offer to buy it from him for a very reasonable price.

What followed was twenty minutes of seemingly endless conversation about this bill and that motion, until Rose couldn't stand it anymore. She'd gone through everything she knew about politics, discussed the ramifications of a nuclear power station in the middle of Cardiff and just when she was contemplating chucking herself out of the window, there was a lull in the conversation which she immediately took advantage of to get to the whole point of her being there.

'I was just looking at that ornament thing you've got on that shelf,' she gestured, 'I've never seen anything like it, what is it?'

'Ah,' came the, rather subdued reply, 'well, to tell you the truth, I have no idea. Bought it from an antique store about a week ago because that space was looking a bit bare, but I think I'm going to get rid of it.'

This was better than she'd hoped, 'why?'

'Well…' he hesitated, seeming to fight with something inside himself, before leaning forward conspiratorially, 'I know it's not really something a politician ought to say, or even _think_, but I really do think it's cursed.'

Rose bit back a smile as she leaned even further across the desk, 'really? Cursed how?'

'Everything around it just goes haywire, the computers, the lights, everything, they just get random power surges, which shorts out the fuses. Even when my computer was off, when I took the plug out, it was still running, it was still switched on, but the screen was this bright white.'

He sat back with the distinct relaxation of someone who'd just unburdened a great secret, looking especially glad that she hadn't immediately laughed at him.

'Wow, that's really cool, so you're just gonna throw it out?' Seeing the end in sight Rose slightly dropped the professional air she'd maintained throughout the meeting, 'cos I've got a mate who would be really interested in it, he loves tinkering about with weird stuff like that and it would make a great birthday present for him.'

'But you don't even know what it is,' a slightly suspicious frown appeared on his forehead.

'I know, but that doesn't matter, this mate of mine, he's not really…all there…if you know what I mean,' she said softly with a wry smile, her thoughts on the real man she was describing, 'but it really is just the kind of thing he'd love, he'll spend hours cleaning it and playing about with it until he could figure out what it was.'

'I don't know…' She almost had him swayed.

'Well you're just gonna throw it out aren't you? I'll give you 20 quid for it.'

Fifteen minutes later Rose exited the building with a smile on her face and an extrapolator under her arm. Ah, he was a nice man but he was a politician, in the end the money had swayed him.

She had a while until her next train, and, although her job had her travelling all over London, and she'd travelled cross country to Norway, this was the first time she'd been to Wales since she got here. Other than the zeppelins that constantly hovered overhead, and a couple of political figures, she had no idea how else this Cardiff differed from hers.

Slowly, her feet dragging, she wandered down the riverside. There was the restaurant where the Doctor had dined with Margaret, the bench on which she'd sat and argued with Mickey…these thoughts were going to drive her insane. She had gone a year and a half trying to push the Doctor and her old life behind her, knowing that if she didn't her whole life would be spent huddled under her duvet crying herself to sleep every night.

Not that it never happened, but for the most part she managed not to dwell on her past. Well, until last night.

She'd managed to go the whole day without thinking about the nightmare that had her screaming into the darkness of her bedroom last night but now as she wandered through the square, beside the Millennium Centre and paused beside the fountain, she couldn't help the images from flooding her mind.

Gunfire. Waves of gunfire, interspersed only by screams. Death hung in the air, the smell of it, the taste of it, even the feel of it.

_Through the golden haze that covered everything she was aware that somewhere far away someone was talking, but the words weren't clear. The gunfire and the screaming were smothered by the light and the pain that had worked its way to the front of her head._

_Pain so intense that it was hard to even stand. Funny, she hadn't been aware of her body until then. As she became aware of her body, more things became clear, like the reason for the pain, and the fact that the light hid a billion things, pasts, futures, possibilities, the entire reaches of the universe and those thousands of other universes so close but just out of reach._

_But there was something else, something she couldn't put her finger on. Something far more important than herself, more important than anything she had faced with the Doctor._

_The Doctor! Through the pain she remembered him, remembered the danger that he was in and the threat that faced him and faced everything that she could see in her mind._

"I want you safe. My Doctor."

The pain and the fear that she had felt in the dream had lingered with her all day, despite her best efforts to forget it.

She dropped suddenly and heavily onto the nearest bench, overwhelmed by the sudden sense that something was _wrong_. The extrapolator dropped to the floor with a loud clang, only to be ignored. The images and feelings that had been so clear when she'd first had the nightmare were some how more vivid with the remembrance of them now, as though they carried a weight that dreams were not meant to hold.

With the memory of her nightmare came more. Pulled from the deepest recesses of her mind, wave after wave of images, sounds, smells, emotions, all bathed in a golden hue assaulted her, pain crashing though her.

Rose clenched her eyes closed against the tears of agony spilling from her, unaware that her screams were echoed by those of scores of others as she struggled to breathe past the memories of the Bad Wolf.

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A/N – Please review! I'm just gonna tell you this now; I'm really going to try hard to update this fic every week/fortnight, but please take into account that both I and my beta are in our 3rd years at uni so there are gonna be times when the next chapter might be slightly delayed. Stick with me tho'!! 


	3. Memories

**"SEE YOU IN HELL"**

**Chapter 2: Memories**

A/N - Big thanks to both my reviewers, and to my loyal beta!

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_There was singing. Inside her head, there was singing, in a voice so pure and ethereal that it made her heart weep._

_She felt the heart of the Tardis, held it's soul nestled beside her own, and when she spoke she had no idea who was speaking, her or the Tardis. But it didn't matter because they felt the same._

"_I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I take the words. I scatter them in time and space. A message to lead myself here."_

_The Doctor was stunned, she felt it through the unique link he held to the Tardis, and now to her, it was impossible. What she was doing was impossible._

"_I want you safe. My Doctor. Protected from the false god."_

_So many emotions running through her, so many thoughts alien to her, and through it all, the pain. So intense that she had no idea how she could even be alive, let alone functioning._

"_You cannot hurt me. I am immortal!"_

_An overwhelming rage flooded her, this was the reason for her pain. This…creature was the cause of all the pain in the universe, and more importantly, for the pain of her Doctor._

"_You are tiny. I can see the whole of time and space. Every single atom of your existence and I divide them."_

_With no more than a flicker of thought, she stretched out her hand and destroyed the Dalek, disintegrated each and every last one of them. She felt no regret for them. No one would mourn such a loss._

"_Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies. The Time War ends."_

_One last exclamation from the self proclaimed Emperor and the last of the Daleks were wiped out of existence, none left in the universe._

_She thought that once she'd removed the threat it would all end. The haunting lullaby would end and she would be able to sleep, free from the pain. But there was more to be done. The Tardis wouldn't let her go, wanted her to feel all the things that the Doctor could feel, see all the things he saw, do what he could. And what he could not. And with that realisation she didn't want it to go anymore._

"_How can I let go of this? I bring life."_

_She stretched out, touched all of the fallen with a whisper of consciousness, searching. The rest were irrelevant, there was one being that was important and in a second she had found him, found him and revived him. It was so easy. Easier than destroying the enemy. But the pain increased. So many things had changed with that one tiny action. She had shifted so much in the universe, altered so many futures. And it was sending her mad._

_She was still talking, but she didn't know how, the pain was overwhelming, and tears trickled down her face._

"_My head…"_

_The Doctors voice was soothing, helping to lessen the ache._

"_Come here."_

"_It's killing me."_

"_I think you need a doctor."_

Rose screamed, the memory of the Doctor's kiss wrenched from her mind with the same amount of force that was currently shaking the bench on which she sat.

Her breathing was erratic, and as the world around her shook she struggled to get control of it. The pain lingered with her, as did the memories, and she had no time to think through what she had just learned before the ground gave a particularly violent shudder and a crack snaked its way through the middle of the square.

She became aware of her surroundings suddenly and watched with the first stirrings of panic as everyone around her screamed and ran. Her throat was hoarse from her own screaming and her tears were still wet on her face.

Grabbing the extrapolator with one hand, Rose stood, knowing that if she allowed herself to panic now, she would just collapse and scream until the world ended. She forced herself to take deep breaths and scrubbed at the tears on her face with her free hand, shoving the pain to the back of her mind. This was nothing compared to working an eight hour shift with a killer hangover courtesy of Shareen.

She had to help. People needed her help but she didn't know what to do. She had the extrapolator but she had no idea how far the reach of its force field extended, and even if she could encompass all the masses of people in and beside the Millenium Centre, she had no idea if it would do any good if the floor fell away beneath them.

It had been a long time since she felt so helpless. Even with the Doctor she'd never felt this way. People, children, were slipping to the ground, being trampled, not knowing where the next split on the ground would be. Families were separated as the chasms in the ground widened further and further.

Resolving what she had to do Rose took an unsteady step towards a teenage girl who had slipped and fallen perilously close to the gaping pit. With every single step, she felt some of her old strength coming back, the mental and emotional strength she had honed after so long with the Doctor. The memories had thrown her but now she had something to do, something more important than dwelling on things that happened a long time ago.

"Are you ok?" Rose reached the girl and knelt beside her.

"I tripped, and hurt my ankle, I can't stand up." The girl blinked tear filled brown eyes up at her, "please help me!"

Rose took hold of her around the waist and, as gently as she could, pulled her up, balancing her unsteadily. She grabbed a man who seemed to be in his early twenties as he tried to run past them, the panic in his eyes reminding her what was almost in her own.

"Help her!" She shouted, thrusting the woman into his arms. She waited a second to watch bewilderment cover the fear on his face and see him put his arm around the girl's waist and help her limp away as quickly as possible, seeming calmer now that he had a purpose.

She moved on, having to trust that the girl would be alright. The shudders in the ground showed no signs of stopping or even getting smaller and Rose was more than aware that at any moment, any piece of ground that she stepped on could fall away beneath her feet.

The screams were dying down, as the majority of people had managed to get out of the area relatively unscathed. Rose stopped and stared around her, looking for anyone else that may need her help. A group of people were huddled beside the huge fountain, on the wrong side of the biggest gaping hole, seemingly unable to figure out where to go.

She had almost reached them, running through left over adrenaline, when, with an almighty crack that made the rest of the night's noises sound like a children's breakfast cereal, the chasm widened even further. Her eyes widened, and Rose tried to stop, tried so hard to skid, not to reach the edge, but she was too close.

With a scream torn from the unequivocal knowledge that she was going to die, Rose Tyler fell into the darkness.

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A/N- I know it's short but about 30 seconds ago I sent the next chapter off to my beta and that's a bit longer. Please review! How do I know if you like it or what I have to improve if you don't tell me?! 


	4. Reunion

"**SEE YOU IN HELL"**

**Chapter 3: Reunion**

A/N - I'm really sorry about the delay but my computer broke and I lost everything on it, thank god my Beta had a copy of this chapter! I'm about 2 and a half pages through the next chapter, but I do have a 1,000 word report, and two 2,000 word essays due in at the end of this week, so I can't promise anything.

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There was…nothing.

Rose couldn't see anything. How could she when she had no eyes? She had no ears so she could hear nothing, she could feel nothing. She had no body with which to feel. This was all there was, just a flicker of consciousness that used to be a person.

She remembered almost everything, could recall every insignificant detail from her 21 years when she did have a body, had a life, was more than just a procession of thoughts.

She knew that she should feel scared, or at least be trying to think of a way to escape but her only emotion was a vague disquiet. She knew that she'd had a life and now she didn't. She accepted that. She knew that she was…

A sudden panic gripped her. Who was she?

She had a name, she knew she did, she'd been thinking about it only a second ago, thinking about how it tripped off the tongue of the Doctor when he was exasperated at her for getting into yet another scrape, "mighta known you'd get us into a mess again…"

She'd forgotten her name, her conscious flicker paused in its panic to think about that.

Did this mean she was dead?

She didn't want to be dead.

Moments ago…or was it hours? There was no concept of time, it could have been days, months or even years since her last thought…she'd been apathetic about the issue of her life, but now, with the idea that it might be over for good she was gripped by an intense fear.

Without a name how could she be anything but dead? Without a body she couldn't live anyway.

If she'd had a physical form, her heart would have been pounding at this point, her breathing quick and fast, the adrenaline rushing through her bloodstream.

Of course, there had been a million times when she'd _thought_ she was going to die, and that hadn't scared her. But now that she knew she _was_ dead, she was absolutely petrified.

Was this hell?

While she was alive, she had avoided thinking about what would happen to her when…she wasn't.

Was this what happened to everyone if they'd done terrible things in their lives? Just left to float and slowly go insane.

She thought about the people she'd known who had died. Funny how she could remember the names of every single one of them, yet she didn't have one of her own; her Grandad Prentice, her dad – oh she hoped he hadn't been subjected to this, Billy Rogers from her physics class who'd died of leukaemia at 14 years old, Captain Jack, Gwyneth from Cardiff…

Jack.

There was something about that name. Something about him.

Jack. Teasing and flirting, with the dimple in his chin and the twinkle in his eye.

Jack, the conman with a conscience, whose easy smiles masked a driving purpose and a disturbing anger.

Jack. His broken body slumped against the inner hull of the ship, defiant to the end, his last words to her resonating within her thoughts.

"See you in hell."

Was he here too? His bounding energy reduced to a barely resonating wonderment hanging in emptiness. Somehow that thought saddened her more than his death itself.

She'd though about him so much lately. Just before she died, she'd been thinking of him. Why?

There had been pain, so much pain, but beyond that there had been memories. Memories of Jack, gulping down air as he breathed his first breath since…since dying!

She remembered now. So clearly, the golden thread reaching for him, changing him, making him better, resurrecting him.

She'd brought him back to life. Had done the impossible. With that knowledge something changed inside herself, shifted.

Blue light filled the world, blue with streaks of gold and she had barely enough time to wonder at the fact that she could see – that she had eyes – before she was sucking in air and voices surrounded her. The blue and gold faded, the voices getting weaker and further away and for a second she was so scared that she would be going back to that nothingness, but the fear faded and she sank willingly into the blackness because even that was something.

"Step back, give her some air."

"What the hell is that?"

"Has anyone called an ambulance?"

"It's on its way."

"Does anyone have any idea who she is? Does she have any I.D. on her?"

Rose felt hands fumbling at the pockets of her suit jacket and, groaning with the effort, she lifted a weak hand to bat them away.

"She's coming round."

The voices, which had been slightly muffled earlier, became clearer and Rose opened her eyes to see whom they belonged to.

She was lying on the ground, outside, a crowd of people surrounding her and what felt like someones jacket under her head – there was a button digging into the back of her neck.

"Are you ok love?" A kindly looking man in his early 40's leaned over her from the side. Despite the chilly weather he was only wearing a shirt. So that would be his button in the back of her neck then.

Rose tried to lift her left hand to feel the back of her head only to find something clamped in it.

"We couldn't get that away from you, you had a death grip on it." The man in the shirt followed her eyes the length of her arm to where her hand was still tightly gripping the extrapolator.

"Where…" Her voice was raspy and the back of her throat grated painfully. Someone handed her a bottle of water and helped her sit up. She took a sip with a grateful smile and tried again.

"Where am I?"

"In Cardiff, beside the Millennium centre," someone offered.

"Cardiff? Well, what…what happened?" She stared around her, past the people, at the blue sky and the perfect square, the Millennium centre and the fountain intact.

"You must have fainted love, don't worry, there's an ambulance on its way."

"No, what happened to the holes? The ground shook and opened like before."

"Poor dear, do you think she hit her head?" murmured someone in the crowd.

"Nothing like that happened love, there's no holes in the ground or anything."

Rose stared round, bewildered, "but it _did_ happen, I fell down one of the holes, and then…there was nothing." She broke off, the sky was blue and pure…and clear. "There's no zeppelins. Where are the zeppelins?"

The nice man looked more concerned now, "where the bloody hell is that ambulance?"

"Right, we'll take it from here," an authoritative voice rang through the square.

The crowd turned to look at someone behind Rose's head. "Who are you then?" Asked the shirt-clad man suspiciously.

"I'm Doctor Owen Harper, and this is P.C. Gwen Cooper, the ambulance got held up so we're here to look after this poor lady until they arrive."

"If you could please just go about your business, thank you for looking after this young lady but you don't need to hang around anymore." A feminine Welsh voice replaced the man's.

Rose soon matched a face to his voice as a grinning, slightly strange looking man leaned over her and, on the pretence of picking up the mans jacket took a lingering look at what she held in her hand.

"Any idea what that is?"

"What's it to you?" Rose clutched the extrapolator tighter.

He just laughed and went to hand the jacket back to its owner before shepherding him away, like the cop was doing to everyone else behind Rose.

"Thanks!" She called after the man, who seemed slightly disgruntled as he put his jacket back on.

She gingerly got to her feet and addressed the strange looking guy who had reappeared by her side, "what happened? I don't really need an ambulance y'know, I just wanna go home."

"That's good, 'cos there's no ambulance coming, we cancelled it."

"What? Why?" Even though she didn't want any medical treatment, it kind of irked her that this man had decided she wasn't going to get any anyway.

"Who have we got and where the bloody hell did she get a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator?"

Rose knew that voice.

Barely daring to believe it, heart pounding in her throat, blood rushing in her ears, Rose slowly turned to face the man that had spoken.

There he stood, as real as ever, long coat gently moving in the breeze, clothes that were straight out of the 1940's.

"Jack?"

Though her voice was little more than a whisper he stiffened at the sound, shifting his eyes from the petite dark haired policewoman he'd been talking to and resting them on her face, where they widened noticeably.

Anger and relief battled on his face before he finally seemed to settle on wonderment.

"Rose?"

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A/N2 - Please review!! Tell me what you think!! And thanks to all reviewers so far! 


	5. Conversation

**"SEE YOU IN HELL"**

**Chapter 4: Conversation**

A/N - apologies for the delay in getting this chapter out, I've had masses of uni work and when I'm not at uni I'm at work. The chapter was gonna have more in it but I decided to leave it here and actually post it. Alos, I should have mentioned this last chapter but I forgot - those of you lucky enough to have seen _Torchwood_, the spinoff with Capt. Jack will have recognised Owen and Gwen, and as a necessity this has sort of become a crossover with Torchwood (in my defence I did start writing it before Torchwood started) The focus will still be on Rose and Jack though.

* * *

"Hold up, you two know each other?"

Rose couldn't move. Every part of her wanted to run to him, to throw her arms around him just to touch him and prove that he was real, that he was here, but something in his eyes stopped her.

"Hello?" the guy didn't seem to enjoy being ignored, he was looking between the two of them – Rose who couldn't take her eyes off the face she remembered so well, and Jack who, for what must have been a rare occasion, didn't seem to know what to do.

"Owen, shut the hell up." Jack recovered first and tore his eyes away from her to look around the square.

"Where's the Doctor? If you're here he can't be far behind."

She cleared her throat and took a few steps closer to him, feeling strangely awkward, "I don't know."

"What?" he looked back at her.

"We…there…I…" She didn't know what to say, how to explain everything that had happened to her.

"We got separated, in the battle at Canary Warf and I haven't seen him since." She settled for the simplest answer.

"But that was ages ago, why didn't he look for you?"

"Because he knew exactly where I was, look I really don't want to talk about this right now." She was acutely aware of the fact that there were two strangers listening intently to her story.

"Guys, take the extrapolator and get back to the Hub, I want initial diagnostics run on it before you go anywhere, have you got that?"

"But Jack…"

"Have you got that?" He shot a glare at the brunette who had protested.

"Fine by me, come on Gwen, let's go."

"Owen…" Owen wasn't listening, he had already grabbed the extrapolator from Rose who let it go mutely, and was already striding towards the fountain. Casting a confused glance between Jack and Rose, Gwen followed him, continually looking back.

"Come on," Jack swept past Rose and made his way across the square, just presuming she would follow him.

Rose had no idea what was going on, she didn't know what she would have expected from seeing him, confusion, wonderment, at least some glimmer of happiness, instead he seemed so cold and indifferent.

She smoothed sweaty hands down her skirt and began to follow him, she would never figure out what happened unless she talked to him.

* * *

Ten minutes later and they were sat in a quiet modern bar, both with a drink in front of them.

"So what the hell happened?" The first words Jack had said to her since basically ordering her to follow him were filled with a simmering anger.

"Well…" she wasn't used to feeling this awkward around Jack, like she was just a child who'd done something wrong and the grown up was demanding an explanation, "I dunno…you know who I am so I suppose I'm back in the right dimension, I guess must have fallen through the rift, I'm pretty sure it opened back home but I don't know why."

"That's not what I meant," he seemed to have a vague interest in what she was saying but he wouldn't be swayed from what he really wanted to know, Rose got the feeling there were things he had been waiting to ask.

"What did you mean then?"

"You left me there."

"What?" Out of the million things Rose had thought he could have said, that wasn't one of them.

"You and the Doctor left me on that godforsaken space station in the future," he was speaking in very low, very careful tones, his face so contorted with rage that Rose was actually scared, "you brought me back to life, changed me without my permission and then just abandoned me, stuck there with the dead, no way out. Do you have _any_ idea what I had to give up just to get away from there? Do you?" The last was shouted at her, his careful control crumbling as he stood and leaned across the table, using his height to get as far across and into her face as possible.

"We didn't know, Jack," she was too scared to move and couldn't raise her voice above a whisper, "we thought you were dead, we nearly died ourselves."

"Bullshit! You knew I was alive, of course you did, besides you didn't exactly look like you'd seen a ghost out there!"

He was still in her face and there was only so much that Rose could endure before she started getting mad herself.

"I didn't know!" She threw her words in his face, "It was wiped out of my head, I wasn't allowed to see it! Jack, until this morning, I didn't know you were alive, I was stuck in some different bloody universe, and I was just doing my job. The next thing I know, Cardiff is ripping apart and I'm falling through a hole. Then there's you. I thought you were dead Jack, and I finally found out that you're not, and you're here, and all you can do is bloody scream at me!"

Tears were streaming down her dirty face, tears of anger, pain, pure frustration.

"Jack, I don't know what to do. I built a life on that other world, my mum's there, Mickey's there, I had a job, a place to live. There are only two things left for me in this world, I have no idea where the hell one of them is and the other…" she had to stop to take a shaky breath, "the other doesn't seem all that happy to see me."

Something in her words or in her face must have struck a chord within Jack, because in the silence that followed her outburst he eased himself slowly back into his seat and, heedless of the curious stares they had attracted, addressed her quietly.

"Tell me."

So she did. She told him everything, from the moment the Doctor sent her away from the Game Station to the moment she'd seen him across the square.

She told him about the Bad Wolf, the Doctor's regeneration, falling into the other world, fighting cybermen, the battle at Canary Warf, how she'd died in one world only to live instead in another. Her work with Torchwood, her baby sister. The nightmare she'd had only last night – it seemed so long ago – the rift opening in Cardiff.

On and on, she told her story, uninterrupted but for when Jack ordered more drinks.

"It was just like before," her voice was hoarse and her eyes haunted with the memories she'd just relived, "the sky went black and the ground was shaking. Then it started to crack."

She had to stop for a moment, clear her mind and try to breathe, "I…fell in."

Jack stared at her incredulously, "You what?"

Her eyes lifted from the pint glass she'd previously been staring into and the look in them made even Jack shiver. They were so full of pain and fear that he almost forgot the anger he'd felt for her for so long.

"I fell into the hole. I think I was dead. Jack, I was in hell. It was so empty, there was nothing, _I_ was nothing, just a thought, a whisper. I was so afraid that I was going to go mad, and I think I did a little."

Tears fell faster than before, "I was between the dimensions. The Doctor had told me what it was like, and that some called it Hell, but I had no idea just how bad it was."

She paused, and Jack watched a thought pass behind her eyes before she looked at him for almost the first time since she'd began talking.

"Is that what it was like for you, when you…died?" She held her breath, not knowing what answer she wanted from him – confirmation that it was, indeed, what hell was like, reassurance that that wasn't it, a description of somewhere like heaven, just anything after life that wasn't _that_.

"I don't know." Jack cleared his throat and took a deep breath, "I can't remember. The Dalek shot me, then the next thing I know, you're whispering in my head and there's a golden fog everywhere. Then I opened my eyes and there was nothing left alive. The Daleks had disappeared and I heard the Tardis engines starting up."

There was desolation in his voice. Buried deep beneath anger and resentment, there was his own pain. He'd spent years roaming time and the universe, conning people, trying to track down his past, and then he finally found friends, people who he could trust, open up to – in a manner of speaking, Rose had no illusions that she knew everything there was to know about Captain Jack Harkness – he had let them in further than he'd let anyone in so long. _That_ she knew.

"Jack, we wouldn't have left you there on purpose, you know that, right?" She wanted _her_ Jack back, she had lost him for so long, only to find someone else in his place.

"Sure," he looked at her steadily, but she knew him too well, she saw the tightening around his eyes.

"No, I mean it. We wouldn't do that to you. There was no way the Doctor could have known that you were alive and everything was wiped out of my head." It was suddenly so important that he believe her, "if we had known that you were still alive, we would have done anything to get back to you. You meant so much to us. You _do_ mean so much to us. Well, to me anyway, I can't talk for the Doctor."

"I looked for you when I got back. I knew it was a long shot but I did." He was avoiding her eyes now and Rose could see that he had held his hurt and anger for so long that to let it go just because she said he should wasn't possible. "It's the right time frame and everything, but after the battle at Canary Warf you were on the list of the dead, and so was your mum and Mickey the Idiot," he shot her a brief smile at the familiar dig, "at first I mourned you but then I figured he'd taken him with you for good. I didn't know what to feel about that. I was glad you two had each other, especially since I figured that Jackie and Mickey probably were dead. But I hated you both because I didn't have that. Because I was stranded here, not knowing what the hell had happened to me. I'd gotten used to being alone, I didn't mind it, and then you two waltzed into my life and screwed it all up."

He paused with a look of disgust on his face and Rose tried to think of something to say to appease him but he carried on, cutting off any further apology.

"You made me one of the _good guys._" The disgust shifted into a mocking smile and a remnant of the old sparkle came into his eyes.

"I told the Doctor I was better off being a conman, but the truth is when you two left I could have started it again, but I chose to help people instead. Man, I hate that guy, does he do that to everyone?"

Rose was grinning by now, "hey, he's not responsible for everything, I like to think I helped a bit."

"Oh, of course, how could I forget all the _help_ you gave me. Damn you Rose Tyler, you made me grow a conscience. Even without you around, every time I wanted to do something naughty I had you or him in my head, saying 'That's not nice Jack'."

She couldn't help laughing at his impression of her. "I wish you could have met him. The new one I mean. I think you would have liked him."

"Is he as gorgeous as the old one?" There was _her_ Jack, going right for the important details.

"His ears are smaller and, for some weird reason, he looks younger. His hair looks like he just fell out of bed and didn't bother doing anything with it, and he has the strangest dress sense."

"Ok, I just have to know one more thing," his face straightened and his eyes returned once more to seriousness as he leaned closer to her, urging her to tell him what he needed to know.

"What?" She felt her own grin fade, responding to his attitude.

"Can he dance?"

* * *

A/N 2 - Please please review, I'll even accept criticism as long as it's constructive! And thanks so much to all those who have reviewed so far, I already have the next chapter (sorta) planned out!


	6. Introductions

**"SEE YOU IN HELL"**

**Chapter 5: Introductions**

A/N - Sorry about the wait, but there was Christmas, then New Year, etc. I got exams coming up, so the next update probably won't be til sometime after the 21st of January, so I wanted to get this one up before they started. Thanks to all my reviewers so far! I know I haven't replied to any reviews but I really really do love getting them, and don't worry, the Dr. will definitly be in this fic!! Obviously this fic doesn't take into account the events of the last episode of Torchwood (SO good!) but I haven't figured out which episodes it goes between yet. Sorry for this obscenely long A/N, here's the chapter:

* * *

"Oh my god…" Rose stared in wide-eyed wonder at the Hub of Torchwood 3 as the round door slid to the side.

"I knew you'd be impressed," Jack smirked, putting his hand on the small of her back and guiding her further in.

"What do you mean, impressed?" she shot back at him, "aren't you important enough to have real offices all the way down here in Cardiff?"

"Hey, I picked the premises!" He attempted to paste on a wounded look but only succeeded in matching her grin.

"That'll explain it then…" she resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him like a taunting child.

"Be careful or I'll set the Pterodactyl on you." He strode ahead of her, purposefully putting an extra strut in his steps to ensure she was watching his backside.

"You're kidding, right?"

"Nope, he's floating around here somewhere," he replied absently as he tapped a couple of keys on a computer in passing, "fell through the rift just like you."

"O…K…" a pause, "so does much fall through the rift?" She followed him on his seemingly aimless wanderings throughout the darkened empty offices. She had to admit it had a certain…charm.

"You'd be surprised. We get everything from pterodactyls to alien eyeballs to Weevils."

"What the hell is a Weevil?" Rose asked but he didn't bother listening.

"Not a lot of people though, and nothing from a different dimension."

He finally stopped to breathe long enough for Rose to jump in.

"So where _do_ they come from then?"

"All over the place," he looked at her as though surprised she even had to ask, "the rift is a hole in space and time so we've had stuff from the other side of the galaxy and from a thousand years ago. The rift is widening. More and more is coming through and we don't know why."

It seemed that all his random meanderings through desks and artefacts had been some sort of a tour as he stopped dead in front of a door and turned to her.

"Do I really need to do the whole spiel about how Torchwood is 'beyond the police' and 'outside the government' and how the '21st century is when it all changes'?"

"Nope, I knew all that before," Rose replied, eyes still roving the Hub.

"Good. Well, you'll need a job then won't you?"

"What?" The change of topic was too swift for her bewildered mind.

"Well you're going to need a job aren't you? And a place to stay. Cardiff isn't so bad and I doubt Torchwood 1 will even let you through the doors, especially since you're dead. Well, to them anyway. Fancy a job here?"

"Hang on, gimme a minute, I hadn't thought that far ahead," her heart was racing with all the things he had just thrown in front of her. A job, a place to stay, a whole other life. Again.

He shut up and looked at her with sad eyes for a minute before opening the door behind him, ushering her into what looked like his office and gesturing for her to sit on the chair in front of the large, cluttered desk.

"This looks as bad as my office," she joked with a wan smile.

"Now I _know_ it's a mess," he groaned, dropping into the seat behind the desk and leaning back far enough to put his feet upon it.

"Oi," she admonished, but her heart wasn't in it.

"Seriously Jack, what am I going to do? I've got nothing. Literally. I'm never going to see my family again. I don't even have any pictures of them. All I've got is this stupid suit. I have nowhere to go. I don't know what to do."

Unshed tears glistened in her eyes and Jack watched her silently, knowing that nothing he said could help her. He knew what she was feeling. He'd felt it himself all those years ago when he'd woken up with no idea where he was and a 2 year gap in his memories.

He shoved down the tiny voice that told him it served her right to feel this way, that she deserved it for what she'd done, leaving him on the game station without a second thought.

Intellectually, he knew that wasn't what had happened. But after being abandoned so many times by people he should have been able to trust, it was hard not to feel it.

"You've got me, Rose. And I know what you're going through. I'll look after you," he took his feet of the desk and leaned forward to look her full in the face, "trust me."

"I do," she whispered, steeling herself against a wave of exhaustion and sitting in the chair across from him, "I do trust you Jack, I'm just so tired. I started my life over once already, and now I have to do it all again? I can't even talk to any of my old friends because they think I'm dead."

Jack could see her weariness in the way she held her body, could hear it in her voice. "Rose, why don't you get some sleep? After all, it's midnight and you definitely look like you could use a break and in the meantime I'll try to figure some things out about the rift, why it opened in the first place, what else came through, that sort of thing."

"Alright," she sighed heavily, "where?"

"I've got a room downstairs, there's some clothes round here somewhere you can sleep in, I'll just find them for you."

He stood and started towards the door.

"Jack?"

Her voice stopped him and he turned to face her at the door.

"All this time, you've been monitoring the rift?" He nodded and she continued, "and there's never been any sign…"

The look on his face was enough and she trailed off. It was a stupid question anyway, he would already have told her, and besides, with the whole of space and time to explore, why would _he_ come here?

* * *

Rose's eyes opened slowly in the semi-darkness and for a moment she stared round confused. It took her several seconds to process what had happened and where she was.

Slowly rising, she hugged the oversize t-shirt Jack had given her to wear and nervously tugged at the boxers she could only hope were his, given some of his…partners, it seemed the lesser of two evils.

"Jack?" It was impossible to tell if it was day or night around here and as she clambered out of the underground room she looked around for a clock, "Jack, what time is it?"

Voices murmured somewhere nearby, too quiet to distinguish whom they belonged to or what they were saying. She padded softly towards them, not wanting to disturb Jack if it was him, not wanting to be seen wearing Jack's clothes if it wasn't.

"She knew Jack?" Rose slowed at the sound of a cultured female voice.

"Yeah, and he knew her, looked awfully surprised to see her, too." She recognised the voice of the strange looking guy and took a few steps further until a room containing a long table came into view.

There were four people sat at the table, a dark haired man and a woman with shoulder length brown hair sat with their backs to her. Facing her was the strange looking guy, Owen something, and an Asian woman.

Jack wasn't there and she took a couple of steps back until she was hiding behind the corner of the doorway, so she could still keep them in view without them being able to see her.

"There was a massive increase in rift activity at the point she came through, way more than we've had before, but there was no reason for it, I can't find any evidence of solar flares or alien technology or anything. The only side effect was her coming through, but that much activity should have practically destroyed Cardiff." The Asian woman was speaking, she was the one with the cultured voice, Rose now discovered.

"Is she human?" The dark haired guy asked with a thick Welsh accent.

"Looked like it," was the brunette's reply, "where did she come from, though? The clothes she was wearing are contemporary, they don't look like they're either from the past or the future. As far as we know, the rift only brings people from different times or different parts of space but this doesn't seem to fit. If she's human, she can't have come from space, and she appears to be from this time."

"Jack knows her, maybe we should ask him."

"Yeah, that's great, Tosh, 's'cuse me, Jack, but you know that Blonde with the extrapolator? Mind telling us who she is and where she came from?' He won't even tell us anything about _himself_, do you really think he'll tell us about her?"

"Well, at least it's a suggestion, Owen, I don't see you coming up with anything."

"I vote for putting her in one of the cells and running diagnostic scans, that'll tell us something at least."

"First of all, yes she is human, secondly, I've already run scans and there's nothing unusual about her. Well, nothing you'd understand anyway."

Rose jumped guiltily at the voice from behind her, as did the four at the table, who all turned to look at her and Jack, who now had his hands on her shoulders and was manoeuvring her into the room, closer to the table.

"Guys, this is Rose Tyler."

"Hi," she muttered sheepishly, raising one hand in a half-hearted wave, tugging the t-shirt down as far as possible with the other.

"Rose, this is Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato, Ianto Jones, and Gwen Cooper." He pointed them out one by one and one by one they murmured some sort of assent.

"Gwen?" As Jack introduced the brunette twisted in her seat, Rose got a good look at her for the first time and something stirred in her memories, "is that short for Gwyneth?"

"Yes it is, why?" Gwen asked with a confused look on her face.

"Um…" unsure of what to say she looked to Jack with questioning eyes.

"Gwyneth?" Understanding spread across his face, and he looked from her to Gwen and back again, "here in Cardiff, 1869? _Her?_ Seriously?"

"Yeah," One of the first things they had all done when Jack arrived on the Tardis was to swap stories, that of the Gelth being one of them.

"This is great!" He had a grin on his face now, "I knew there was something different about her, now I know what it is. Damn, that's been bugging me for ages!"

"Ahem," Owen seemed to be the most impatient of the group, "care to share with the class there, Captain?"

Jack led Rose to a seat, still grinning before addressing Gwen, "er, I tell you what, why don't you come into my office, I'll fill you in and then if you want these vultures to know the whole story you can tell them. As for the rest of you guys, wait here a minute, make small talk, get to know each other."

Gwen looked round the table and stood up, "this better be good, Jack, I don't want any of that cryptic rubbish you usually spout off."

"Good? This is great," he seemed inordinately excited by the news, "explains a hell of a lot too."

He turned to make for his office when Rose piped up.

"Jack? In case you forgot, I'm still wearing the clothes I slept in. What happened to my suit?"

"Oh yeah," he turned back with a distracted look on his face, "wait here, as soon as we've finished in the office I'll find you some clothes. Oh, and you must be starving, Ianto, can you rustle something up?"

With that, he was gone and Rose sat there alone, with three curious pairs of eyes aimed at her.

"So what do you want to eat?" Ianto stood and asked with a smile, "we've got eggs any way you want them, toast, bacon, cereal, all the usual. Oh, and some leftover pizza and Chinese takeaway."

"Er, I'm not really hungry, thanks. Is there any chance of a cup of tea though?"

"Sure," she gave him a grateful smile as he wandered away, not bothering to ask the others what they wanted.

She dropped her eyes to face the two that were left, both of whom were still staring at her – Owen looking uncomfortably like he was mentally undressing her.

"So…" Tosh spoke after a moment of awkward silence, "how do you know Jack then?"


	7. Discussion

"**SEE YOU IN HELL"**

**Chapter 6: Discussion**

A/N – Exams are finally over and here's the next chapter, hope you enjoy it, sorry about the wait!

* * *

"I, er…we travelled together for a while." She opted for the simplest response, but knew that the chances of them settling with that was slim, especially since they seemed to know almost nothing about him themselves.

"How long ago?" Owen seemed to have ceased his ogling now that there was the prospect of some answers about Captain Jack Harkness.

"It was a couple of years ago, we travelled with another guy until we got separated."

"What else do you know about Jack?" Tosh asked, a gleam of curiosity in her eyes.

"Look, maybe you should ask Jack, I don't really wanna tell you something he wouldn't want me to."

"Ha!" Owen sat back triumphantly, "I knew it, she doesn't know any more about him than we do, she's just an old one night stand who couldn't stay away."

"S'cuse me, who are you calling old?" Rose didn't need this crap right now. "Just 'cause I don't go around telling everyone someone else's business, I don't do that to a friend, mind you, looking at you I'd say you wouldn't know anything about friends. I bet you were the one in school who bullied all the other nerds because the cool kids picked on you. And, by the way, reverse psychology doesn't work on me, it just pisses me off."

He looked angry now. "Hey, it could be worse, you probably got pregnant and dropped out at 16. That's how you know Jack, isn't it? He knocked you up and buggered off."

Poor Tosh just sat in silence as Rose and Owen stared each other down across the table, voices raised and words chosen for maximum impact.

"Y'know what, I _did_ drop out of school at 16, but I've seen and done more than you could ever imagine, sitting here under Cardiff looking at all this alien stuff, you have no idea what it's really like out there."

"I've seen scores of aliens, little girl, we've studied things you've only seen in your nightmares."

Rose's laugh was bitter, "you have no idea what's in my nightmares, you geek. Fine, so you've studied aliens, big deal. I've been to the edge of the galaxy, stood in front of a black hole. I've watched the world end – a few times! I've been to another dimension and to the place in between them, you don't know anything, and it's really gonna piss you off when you realise I know more about all your 'alien tech' than you ever will."

By this time, they were both out of their seats and leaning across the table, in each others faces.

"Yeah, you wish. Why don't you run home and do your nails while the smart people figure out the hard stuff."

"Trust me, I'd love to," she yelled back at him.

"Well go on then, what's stopping ya? 'Cause we're certainly not."

"I can't go home!"

"Sure you can, it's easy. Just walk out that door and get on a bus or something, bye bye, don't come back!"

"It's not that simple you idiot. If it was then I wouldn't have spent the last 10 minutes shouting at you!"

"What the hell is going on in here?" Jacks voice boomed through the Hub, shutting them up immediately, Owen because it seemed he was used to Jack being his superior, but Rose out of sheer surprise.

They both froze and no-one spoke, Gwen and Ianto standing behind Jack looking curious, Tosh making herself as small and insignificant as possible on her chair, and Rose and Owen, flustered, heated and…alive.

She couldn't help the giggle that escaped her, no-one spoke to her like that. Since Canary Warf everyone had tiptoed around her, she barely even argued with her mum anymore. Even Jack last night, it hadn't just been a stupid fight, he'd wanted something from her. But this? Just a silly argument. 2 people, no reasoning behind it, blood rushing, adrenaline pumping, heart pounding, mind racing, all the things that reminded you that you were alive.

The laughter rose and as the confused expressions everyone wore deepened, she had to laugh even harder.

"Rose?" Jack didn't sound angry anymore, he sounded baffled and concerned.

"I'm sorry," she managed to gasp out between giggles, "gimme a minute."

That 'minute' turned to 5 before she'd calmed down enough to speak.

"Sorry," she grinned round at everyone from where she once again sat.

"Ok, so what happened?"

Owen just glared at him sullenly until Jack sighed and turned away from him, "Rose?"

She had to stifle another laugh before she could speak, "nothing happened, me and Owen here just had a stupid little argument. It was great!"

"Great?" Owen was incredulous, you didn't expect someone to collapse in a fit of giggles after a full blown screaming match, "what the hell are you on Blondie, and where can I get some?"

"I'm serious, I haven't had an argument like that for years," she couldn't keep the smile off her face.

Jack snorted, a very unbecoming sound which didn't match the gentlemanly exterior the ex-Time Agent portrayed, "I don't believe that for a second."

"I'm totally serious though," her laughter seemed infectious, Jack was smiling now, his _real_ smile, the old one he used to wear with her and the Doctor. It was the first time he'd smiled like that since she'd gotten here and, judging by the looks on the others faces, they hadn't seen this smile before, open and joyful, a shared joke between friends.

"Rose, you can argue with anyone. Remember the High Master of Kalgorn?"

"That _so_ wasn't my fault!" She almost squealed, pointing her finger at him to emphasise her point.

"Oh, it totally was!" He turned to their dumbstruck audience. "We're on this planet, Kalgorn, renowned for its peace throughout the whole galaxy, its leader, the High Master, this 60 year old man, never raised his voice in his whole life, we've been there for 15 minutes and he's screaming his head off at Rose."

"It was all the Doctor's fault," she cut in.

"Don't try to shift the blame onto him, you're the one who played 'patty cake' on his head while he was asleep."

"I thought he was a statue and you _know_ it! Anyway, the Doctor dared me to do it, so it's all his fault."

"_Yeah_. So this guy jumps off his seat and starts shouting at her, the words he's screaming made even me blush! She just keeps saying he's overreacting til eventually she snaps and starts insulting him back. I think it was the crack about his mother that eventually had half the city chasing us!"

They had to pause in their reminiscing because it was getting hard to talk, laugh and breathe at the same time.

The looked around at the bewildered faces of the rest of the Torchwood team in silence for a few seconds before Owen's slow, "er…what?" re-ignited their hysterical laughter.

* * *

The jeans were a bit loose and the purple zip up hoodie hung slightly baggy on her frame. She stared at herself in the mirror and wondered why she felt so weird about wearing these clothes. 

"Y'know, they used to fit you."

Ah, that was it. They used to be hers.

"Yeah, well there was a reason I left them at home when I went travelling," she turned to face Jack, "where'd you get them from?"

"Everything of yours was confiscated by Torchwood after the battle. They were just sitting in a warehouse so I…salvaged them."

"And while we're having a Q&A session, what's with all this sneaking around and creeping up on people? You do know it's really annoying, right?"

"Old habits and all that." He grinned and pushed away from the wall he was leaning on.

"They can't be that old, you never snuck up on us in the Tardis."

"I learned to be cautious since the last time you saw me."

"I know," she sighed and tried to figure out how to say what she wanted without offending him, "and you shouldn't have had to. I miss you Jack."

He raised an eyebrow at that, in that quintessentially Jack way, "'miss'? Present tense?"

"Yeah." She stepped towards him, "I know you've been through a lot, and of course you'll have changed, but I miss the old Jack. You always smiled back then, you were more likely to flirt than shout," she shrugged, "I dunno, you're just so different."

Jack was grave as he looked down at her, "I went through a lot, Rose."

Rose stood in front of him, her eyes downcast, "yeah, forget I said anything," she turned away but he slipped his arm around her waist and turned her back to face him.

"I'm still the same person, I've just…grown a bit."

She smiled up at him sadly, "Haven't we all."

"I haven't changed that much," his face split into a grin and he lifted a hand, holding something she hadn't noticed before.

He pressed 'play' on the remote control in his hand and soft music filled the room.

"Let me tell you about this girl I met," he grabbed her hand and started moving her slowly around the room to the strains of Moonlight Sonata, "we had champagne on top of an invisible spaceship tethered to Big Ben during the height of the London Blitz."

"Sounds like fun."

"Yeah it was, I had to rescue her from a barrage balloon and she fainted in my arms."

"I'm sure that happens to you a lot," Rose was letting him lead, not having had much experience at ballroom dancing.

"Not as often as you'd think!" He grinned even wider, "nah, but this girl was special, I travelled with her for a while and it's not everyday you meet a girl who can bring you back from the dead."

She looked up from her feet to smile at him, grateful for the effort he was making, "well, if you think there's any way I can compete with such an amazing woman, I heard there was a job going begging."

* * *

A/N2 – I know there wasn't much (well…any) action, but there is going to be, I promise! Please review! And thanks to every single reviewer so far for putting huge grins on my face when I go to my email inbox! 


	8. Explanations

**"SEE YOU IN HELL"**

**Chapter 7: Explanations**

A/N - Sorry about the wait, I had planned on this chapter being longer but on the advice of my amazing beta, TheSheps, and because you've waited so long already, I'm giving it to you now.

* * *

It wasn't often that Rose was nervous but she couldn't help it this afternoon.

She sat at the same conference table at which she'd argued with Owen that morning and which was still strewn with the remnants of the pizza's that had been ordered in for lunch.

Jack had left her in his office after their dance, claiming he needed to do some damage control with the rest of his team before he could announce that he was going to hire her.

Rose had never been in the habit of doing what she was told, especially if what she was told was to sit quietly and be a good girl but she'd always found it hard to ignore Jack's puppy dog eyes. So she resigned herself to snooping through his office and playing with the Gameboy she'd found in one of his drawers.

He'd reappeared a few hours later with some pizza and – finally – the cup of tea she'd asked Ianto for. After giving her a few minutes to wolf them down he told her that he was going to tell them but he'd leave it up to her to decide what she'd tell them about herself.

So here she was, being stared at with, if it was possible, even more curiosity than that morning, wondering what the hell she was going to tell these people.

Jack stood comfortably at the head of the table, having easily reverted back to the humourless leadership stance he'd held since she arrived.

"Guys, Rose is gonna be working with us from now on."

"What?" Owen's shout of disbelief was far from unexpected.

"She's got experience with what we do," Jack sat, "and she's reliable and trustworthy." Rose shot him a small smile which he returned slowly.

"Excuse me, but some of us had to train for years and work our way up through the ranks to get our jobs here, you're, what? 21? You don't have any experience."

"I've worked for Torchwood in London for 2 years," she quietly retorted.

"No, you haven't," Owen stated flatly.

"Er, yeah, I have. I think I'd know that a bit better than you, considering it's my life and all. Is he always this annoying?" She asked Tosh, earning herself a smile and a small nod before Owen continued.

"They don't have you listed as an employee. In fact, you're dead." He lifted a piece of paper and started reading from it, "Rose Marion Tyler entered the offices of Torchwood 1 without authorisation, accompanied by a Level 1 threat known only as 'The Doctor'. Together they disrupted the workings of Torchwood, becoming aggressive and disregarding any attempts to detain them. They held an integral role in the fight against an invading alien threat, their presence suggesting prior knowledge of the attack. Tyler is believed to have been killed during the battle. Whereabouts of The Doctor are currently unknown. He is to be detained on sight in connection with this and numerous other threats against the British Empire."

He finished and placed the paper on the table triumphantly, "you didn't really think we wouldn't look you up?"

"They're not very thorough, are they?" Rose just grinned at him, "it was actually 2 alien threats, the Daleks and the Cybermen, and they were fighting each other as much as they were fighting us. We didn't know it was going to happen, the Doctor just has this weird ability to turn up wherever there's trouble. Oh yeah, and I didn't die, I just got dragged into another dimension."

"Another dimension?" That peaked Tosh's interest, "how?"

"Um…something to do with a hole in the middle of the sky, I think. I never really understood it, but that's where the ghosts were coming from, they were the Cybermen from the other dimension trying to cross over and conquer this one. But you all probably know that already. Anyway, the Doctor managed to open the hole up and all of the Daleks and Cybermen got sucked into the void between the dimensions. I nearly did too, until my dad – the one from the other dimension – pulled me through to his dimension too. And that's where I've been living for the last 2 years."

"Until you reappeared here?" Tosh was frantically taking notes on the back of Owens piece of paper, which she'd swiped when Rose started talking.

"Yeah, I was in the other Cardiff, and the rift opened." She had to pause before she could go on, "I fell through it into the void and then something happened, I think the extrapolator must have protected me, because there was this blue and gold light and I came out this side."

"You think the extrapolator protected you?" Tosh glossed over Rose falling through the rift, it wasn't her fault, Rose thought, she had no idea of the significance of the void.

"That's what it does," supplied Jack, "tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator. Creates a force field around a person, protecting them, most people stand on it, but it does work if you're just holding it. It can protect you from most dangers, even, say, a nuclear plant blowing up," although they missed the joke, none of the team could miss the wink he shot Rose.

"Jack, what did you mean when you said Rose had something unusual about her that we wouldn't understand?" Rose could almost see Tosh's mind working, trying to find links between all the different information it was receiving.

"I believe I said there was nothing unusual about her, Tosh," he glanced at Rose as though unsure of whether he'd said too much.

"And then you said, 'nothing you'd understand, anyway,' so what is it?" Tosh wasn't being nosy, it was just her analytical mind working.

"Tosh," Gwen, more of a people person, seemed to pick up on the signals between Rose and Jack, "maybe…"

"It's alright," Rose interrupted, "well, I'm probably covered in void stuff, anyone who's travelled through the dimensions has some on them, so I'm probably soaked in it. And, I sort of took in a time vortex, wiped out one of the greatest alien threats in the universe, and caused a different alien to regenerate."

In the incredulous silence that followed, she sighed heavily and just smiled, "so don't you lot ever do any work around here?"

A/N 2 - Sorry to ramble on, but I have a wicked case of writers block at the moment, the whole story is planned out but my brain is rebelling against me because I'm making it work with numbers at uni. I'm really trying, promise! And as always, I'm a total review junkie so please please review!! Even if it's just to tell me to shut up!


	9. Meeting

**"SEE YOU IN HELL"**

**Chapter 8: Meeting**

**A/N** - once again **MAJOR APOLOGIES** (see, Capitals, Bold _and_ Underlined!) for the delay. I'm starting a fund: Society for the Locating of Runaway Muses. All donations will be greatly recieved. As will any information on the whereabouts of my own muse. Sorry, mini rant.

* * *

"Right, Tosh, I want details on the rift, anything at all remotely similar to when Rose came through for the last 6 months, and a list of any possible reasons why. Owen, since you've already started, I want all information from Torchwood regarding Rose and the Doctor for the past two years. If they even mentioned her name in an internal memo, I want to know about it. Gwen and Ianto, can you clean the extrapolator, label it up and put it in one of the equipment lockers?" Jack barked out orders with a practiced ease.

What surprised Rose most was the fact that everyone actually followed them, rising and moving to their assigned tasks without any argument.

"You've got them well trained." She just sat where she was and smiled at him once they'd gone.

"Yeah, it's great," he smiled back at her distractedly, whilst leaning down to tap at the keys on a laptop in front of him.

"It's so weird seeing you acting like a grown up."

That got a reaction, he stood up straight and looked at her, an old twinkle in his eye, "you know all you have to do is ask and I'll show you exactly how grown up I am."

"…And you're a teenager again," she stood herself and swiped him on the arm, "you know what I mean. People listen when you tell them to do something, you do paperwork, you have _responsibilities_!"

"Uh-huh," he sauntered slowly towards her, "and what were you doing in Cardiff?

"Working…but that's not the point and you know it."

"Seems like I'm not the only one who grew up," he stuck his tongue out at her, "I gotta go do some _paperwork_," he adopted the same disgusted air she'd used, "until I can smooth you working here, you don't officially have any duties. Hang round, talk to the others, they'll distract you."

He was on his way out the room when he turned and added as an afterthought, "and can you please stay away from Owen? He doesn't work so good during an argument, and even worse when he's got a black eye from the punch I'm sure you're gonna give him pretty soon."

She stuck her own tongue out at his back in retaliation as he chuckled to himself.

Taking a look at the state of the table, which was still strewn with sheets of paper, pizza boxes, mugs and several dirty plates, she sighed and began to clear up, it was almost as bad as the living room back home, when mum had had some of her mates round for a chick flick marathon. Well, the living room of the council flat, before they had the mansion complete with housekeeper.

A siren blasted through the Hub, it's wailing cutting off her thoughts. Rose dropped everything back onto the table and was out of the room immediately, moving towards the computer area where Tosh had just appeared.

"Jack! Major rift activity in an abandoned tower block two miles west." Tosh sounded like she'd done this enough times to know exactly what information was necessary and what was superfluous.

"The readings are off the scales but CCTV doesn't show anything unusual."

"Doesn't mean there isn't anything, though," Jack stated grimly, appearing next to her. By this time everyone had congregated around her, awaiting their orders, Rose hanging back slightly, not used to it.

"Tosh, stay here and monitor it, anything shows up on CCTV, I want to know about it. See if you can hack into a satellite or something, get me infrared. Ianto, you're giving us directions, and make sure that if anything _does_ happen, the police stay away. Owen get the kit, you and Gwen are with me."

"I'm coming too," Rose broke in, as he looked at her, about to give her an order.

"I told you, Rose, I need to smooth it over first, technically you don't have a job here yet, you can't come."

"Yeah, I am," she stated obstinately, folding her arms.

The others held their breaths, watching this battle of wills, unsure whether Jack would bark his orders at her as he would any of them who had gotten out of line, or if he would give in to her, be as strange as he had been ever since this blonde had appeared.

"Fine." He bit out the word, "but you do what I say out there, I can't protect you if you don't."

She grinned at him, "Jack, you don't really think I'm going to take orders off you? Besides, I can take care of myself, and I've saved your ass plenty of times."

She moved towards the door with the others gaping after her. It was only a couple of seconds before Jack joined her, followed by the others.

"Don't blame you, it is such a great ass," he grinned.

"Talk to me, Tosh." The doors to the SUV slammed behind the four of them as they started towards the dilapidated tower block.

"The place has been abandoned for a year, due to be demolished sometime in the next 4 months. The readings from the rift are still going haywire and I'm picking up some other readings which don't make sense yet, I have no idea where they're coming from. I haven't been able to get into the satellites yet so until then, you're going to have to rely on the CCTV I can pick up. It only covers the outside, which is clear, but the readings are coming from the inside." Tosh's clipped voice was tinny over the earpieces they wore, Rose having taken one with much distrust and suspicion, she'd been notorious in her old job for her refusal to wear anything like a bluetooth headset.

"I need you to be more specific, Tosh," Jack didn't even break his stride.

"Somewhere on the top three floors, that's as close as I can get it."

"Keep trying with the satellites, let me know if you get any more information. Gwen and Owen take the third floor down, Rose and I'll take the top floor, we'll meet in the middle."

They split up, Rose and Jack taking the stairs at one end of the building, the other two taking the far end. Rose trailed behind Jack all the way up the stairs, it had been a while since she'd done this, been in the thick of the action.

All her work at Torchwood, apart from the occasional fetch-and-carry, had been in the capacity of an advisor, sitting behind a desk, now here she was, doing something that made her feel almost alive again.

Caught up in her musings, she entered the dusty top floor several steps behind Jack, in time to hear him shout an order at someone. With Jack's back blocking her view, she couldn't see much apart from the grey and brown tones of a long ago looted office, the blood was rushing in her ears and all she heard was Jack, his gun pointed, yelling at whoever or whatever was there to put something down and turn around.

Something must have happened because the next thing she knew, Jack had moved forward, holstered the gun and aimed a punch at what she now saw was a man.

A man who was fighting back, blood from the burst lip he'd been given by Jack dripping onto his suit.

His pinstriped suit.

Jack had him on the ground and she saw the recognition in the man's eyes as he stared up at Jack, oblivious to anything else in the room.

Before he could say anything, Jacks foot drew back, aiming his heavy1940's army issue boot to do the maximum damage.

She couldn't get to him in time, the scuffle had drawn them further into the open room, all she could do was watch and shout.

"Doctor!"

A/N 2 - the good news is that my Taxation lecture yesterday was so utterly boring and pointless I gave up on taking notes and started the next chapter. The bad news is that my muse has buggered off again so I can't promise anything. Tho' she seems to like reviews _HintHint_.


	10. Revelations

"**SEE YOU IN HELL"**

**Chapter 9: Revelations**

**A/N** - Wow, 12 reviews for the last chapter, thank you guys all so so so so much! My muse returned briefly to drop this chapter into my head as I "accidentally" missed my tax lecture this morning and went to Starbucks instead. Then she stuck her tongue out and went off again - probably to say hi to Blaidd Drwg. Angel, tell the Torchwood search party to check with her.

* * *

Everything happened so fast, too fast for Rose to move, yet somehow she could see everything happening with such clarity it was almost as though it took forever.

The two men who had come to mean so much to her, whom she'd never thought to see again, especially not in the same room, both turned their faces towards her as she shouted that one word.

"Doctor!"

Whereas the Doctor's eyes remained fixed on her in a state of shock, Jack shifted his attention back to the figure below him, disbelief in his eyes, replaced by alarm as he attempted to stop the swing of his foot, still aimed at the figure's stomach.

The normally unflappable Captain Jack twisted awkwardly, landing on the floor beside the Doctor with a bang, pulling the focus back from Rose.

"Jack!" The hyperactive enthusiasm Rose remembered so well, "what are you doing in Cardiff?" He didn't give Jack the chance to respond before he sat up abruptly and his face straightened.

"Hang on, weren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Yeah, I am, I mean, was…" Jack stammered, something which Rose was sure was a first given his general cockiness.

The Doctor didn't say anything for a few seconds, puffing out his cheeks in that way he did before rising gracefully to his feet and turning to Rose.

There was that smile, the one she'd loved since the very time he'd flashed it at her and said the word "Barcelona."

"Rose," she'd missed the way he said her name. His hair was still a mess, he was still wearing Converse with a suit, and his eyes still held that curious mix of wisdom and hope, the alien who'd seen so much yet still honestly believed that somehow there could be some good left in the universe. He was still her Doctor, and she was still his Rose.

With a sob she launched herself across the room and flew into his arms, her tears filled with both joy and pain. She couldn't believe that after all this time she could hold him in her arms again, her broken heart was having trouble taking it in.

He grabbed her, that massive grin still splitting his face, and, using her own momentum, swung her around in a circle, pure happiness at having her there overriding the impossibility of it.

When the Doctor eventually put her down, laughter and tears mingling in her throat, she buried her head in his chest, not caring that she was getting his suit jacket wet, just concentrating on the feel of his arms around her waist, the soft kisses on top of her head, the way he whispered her name over and over as he moved his hands up and down her back, soothing her.

Everything from the past two days; thoughts of her own death, the madness in the rift, finding Jack, realising that he'd changed, knowing that it was her fault, and the unequivocal knowledge that she was never going to see her family again. All of it, poured out of her, along with the heartbreak, pain and fear of the last two years, everything slipped away as she let the tears fall.

Gradually, her sobs slowed, her breathing calmed and she let herself get lost in the twin heartbeats of his embrace.

* * *

"Is she alright?"

Of all the voices that could have roused Rose from the warmth of the Doctor's arms, that of Owen Harper would not have been her first choice.

"Shut up, Owen," Gwen sounded slightly exasperated and Rose lifted her head to smile in gratitude at the outspoken Welsh woman.

"She's fine," the Doctor let her go as she regretfully eased out of his arms, "aren't you, Rose?" He smiled down at her as she scrubbed the tear tracks from her face, revelling in the sound of his voice after so long.

"Never better," she couldn't help smiling back at him before blinking around at the rest of the assembled, Owen and Tosh, staring with barely concealed curiosity, and Jack with a sadness in his face which he smoothed over as soon as he caught her looking at him, replacing it with a cocky grin of his own.

"How come I never got a welcome like that?" He asked, laughter in his voice, but a request in his eyes.

"You looked mad at me," Rose replied, nodding slightly as the message passed between them.

"I was talking to him," he nodded towards the Doctor.

"You were kicking me!" The indignant look on his face and squeak to his words brought out Rose's massive grin, and for the first time in years she felt right.

This was it, the three of them back together, the way it was supposed to be.

"So who's this guy then, and what the hell is he doing here? Have you all forgotten that we're supposed to be working?" Rose had almost been able to forget about their annoying audience.

"That _is_ a good question, Doctor," Jack stated quietly, putting off the questions he knew the Doctor would ask about Owen and what the 'work' they were doing would be, "what _are_ you doing here?"

"Me? You're the one's who aren't supposed to be here." The Doctor stated, turning grave, "Jack, you're supposed to be dead, and you, Rose Tyler, are supposed to be in another dimension.

This wasn't exactly the reunion Rose had envisioned. She wasn't asking for balloons and champagne or anything, but immediate questions with him looking at her like he barely knew her wasn't comforting. A smile would be nice.

"I know," she couldn't believe she was going to have to explain it all to yet another person, "fell through the void, reappeared here, don't make me say it all again."

The Doctor looked slightly stunned at her abruptness but Jack just chuckled, especially when Rose finished it off with: "so what's your story?"

* * *

Owen had been surprisingly angry about being told that he could take the afternoon off for the second time in 2 days. He seemed to Rose to be one of those people who always had to know exactly what was going on.

Once he and Gwen had left, muttering darkly about secrets and mysteries and weird things happening to their boss, the three left in the abandoned office just looked at each other, awkward now that there was no more easy bantering, now that explanations were due and questions were waiting to be asked.

"Who wants a cup of tea, then?"

"How very British," mocked Rose in a bad attempt at speaking poshly, "have unexpected visitors dropped by? An impossible reunion? Have a cup of tea!" She didn't mind that Jack and the Doctor just looked at her like she was touched in the head, it made it seem just like old times.

"So where've you parked the Tardis then?"

The Doctor just snorted and moved off towards a corridor at the far end of the room while Rose and Jack trailed behind.

"Why did you start beating him up?" Rose asked Jack in a hissed whisper.

"I wasn't beating him up," he replied indignantly, "the suspect looked hostile, the whole thing stank of alien tech and then he reached into his pocket for what I could only assume was a weapon so I subdued him."

"I feel sorry for any aliens in Cardiff while you're in charge," she muttered with a small smile, but it was just one more example of how her fun-loving easy-going Jack had changed – where violence was pretty much a first response for him.

"For the record, I was going for my sonic screwdriver," the Doctor called back from further down the corridor, "the Tardis had locked onto some readings from that room, whatever caused them was gone by the time I got there, I was going to see if the screwdriver could pick up any tracks with it."

"Well shouldn't we go back then?" Rose asked, speeding up to catch up with him.

"Nope," he replied cheerily, "whatever it was will be long gone by now. It was a long shot anyway. Ah, here she is."

He tugged open the door to what seemed to be a storage cupboard and Rose got her first glimpse in too long at the magnificent blue box which had been her home for years.

"I almost forgot how beautiful she was," Jack's American twang held a hint of wistfulness.

"I didn't," she breathed, moving past the Doctor to place her hands lovingly on the rough blue wood, feeling the bumps and tiny cracks in the paint; all the imperfections that made it so perfect. Some of her best memories involved this unimportant looking box, and some of her worst.

She shot the Doctor and Jack a happy look before pulling open the door and running in, the soft goldy brown of the control room exactly as she remembered it.

Almost.

She heard the boys enter behind her but her eyes were fixed on something in the corner.

Unless there was something the Doctor wasn't telling them, he wasn't travelling alone.

Rose couldn't pull her gaze from the bright red skirt hanging on the handrails round the central controls, in a mockery of the way she'd draped her wet clothes a million times.

"Rose?" The Doctor sounded worried as she felt him come up behind her.

She didn't even turn around but she knew he'd seen what she had by the way he sucked in a breath through his teeth as she'd heard him do so many times before when he was about to explain something to some alien who was about to attack them. She didn't give him a chance to get the first word out before she spoke herself.

"Was I that easy to replace?"

* * *

A/N2 - I am such a nasty author! Make me smile people, leave me a review and I might not be so nasty. Hopefully the muse will come back sooner this time! 


	11. Searching

"**SEE YOU IN HELL"**

**Chapter 10: Searching**

**A/N - **Holy crap, it's been so long! A million apologies! The next chapter is written, just needs a few tweaks, and the beginning of the chapter after that is started so hopefully I can be a better author and update in less than 6 months this time. I'm hanging my head in shame!

DISCLAIMER: O...K... Mine? Nope.

* * *

"It's not like that, Rose."

She turned to see the anxious look in his eyes, numbness sweeping over her. So much had changed, why shouldn't the Doctor? It shouldn't surprise her that he was just like Jack – changing so easily into someone new.

Rose had known, somewhere in the back of her mind, hidden away after meeting Sarah Jane Smith, that it could happen. But she'd always thought it would never be her heart the Doctor would break.

Even when they'd been separated, she'd held on to the notion that he wouldn't replace her, he'd be too busy trying to break down the barrier between the worlds, trying to get her back.

Maybe he wasn't her Doctor anymore.

She watched him watch her. A slight frown between his eyebrows crumpled deeper the longer she stared.

Jack faded into nothing as the world narrowed to the two of them. Rose knew the Doctor was waiting for her. To say something? Do something?

A shuddering breath pulled it's way out of her and she finally broke the silence,

"It's been two years and we were in separate universes," she gave a half-hearted shrug, "couldn't expect you to just travel alone."

The Doctor almost seemed at a loss for words and Jack wisely kept his mouth shut, watching the exchange with a sad interest.

Her regretful smile was small, "you needed someone to hold your hand."

"You're right. It has been two years. And there's been a few passengers in this ship since we got separated. But there was never another companion. Not really. You weren't replaced."

Even after all this time, he somehow seemed to know exactly what was troubling her. Staring into his solemn eyes, Rose debated with herself, but it was short lived.

In all the time she'd known the man, he'd never lied to her. Oh he'd been secretive and mysterious and cryptic as hell, but not once had the Time Lord not been honest.

She nodded, knowing that he would understand the gesture, without the need for words.

When the grin split his features, she felt her own smile stretch.

"Thank God for that," Rose had almost forgotten about Jack, "now that you two have kissed and made up, can we get on with the job?"

"Don't remember you being so 'all about business' Jack," the Doctor bounded towards the controls of the Tardis, pulling on levers, hammering on buttons, _the way it was supposed to be_, Rose couldn't help musing.

"A lot's changed, Doctor. In the words of Rose, 'don't make me say it all again'."

"Oh, fair enough. Who's up for a trip to the centre of Cardiff?" After a few seconds of contemplation, that smile was back on his face. That one that said he knew he was in the middle of something potentially life threatening, earth destroying, and incredibly fun.

* * *

The Doctor's reaction to the hub of Torchwood was pretty much the same as Rose's.

"Don't you ever clean?"

"I wasn't really expecting company!" Jack defended himself weakly as they stepped out of the Tardis, Rose grinning now that they were back in the place she was rapidly considering home.

Wandering slowly around the large room, followed by Jack and Rose, the Doctor quietly took in everything, stopping every now and then, much as Jack had when leading Rose around it for the first time. Except the Doctor wouldn't stop to tap keyboards, he was – seemingly randomly – pointing his sonic screwdriver at computer monitors and various other items of equipment.

"Some of this stuff isn't from Earth, Jack." He muttered after a while.

"I know." Strangely, he seemed alright with letting the Doctor take the lead, seeming to Rose that he may have missed being able to just be a follower in some things.

"And don't think I've missed the fact that this is Torchwood." Eventually he turned to face them, his features unreadable.

"It's not the same as London was, Doctor. This is Torchwood 3 and I'm in charge." Drawing himself up to his full height, Jack placed his hands in his pockets and looked at the Doctor with the same authority Rose had seen in him when giving orders to his employees.

"We're not gathering weapons, we're not imprisoning alien lifeforms unless they actively pose a threat and we're not attempting to change the course of human history or technological advances in any way. My team is handpicked by me and nothing leaves this base."

"Well Well, look at you Captain. Alright then," he grinned that manic grin again, "let's find out what's going on, shall we?"

* * *

Three hours later, Rose was sitting on the sofa beneath the Torchwood sign, sipping a steaming cup of tea and watching her two men rushing this way and that, using all manner of tools to hook the Tardis up to the computers and rift monitors.

"Ha! Told you I could do it!" The Doctor looked up from the wires he'd just finished attaching with his sonic screwdriver.

"Never doubted you for a second," Jack gave him a friendly push as he wandered past and dropped onto the sofa beside Rose.

"So, you've boosted the power, right?" Rose batted Jacks searching hands away from her cup of tea and addressed the Doctor who now stood in front of them.

"Oh, not just that. I connected the Tardis to the machinery in here. It just needs a few minutes to adapt and then the power will be boosted, the geographical field it can reach will be extended and it'll be more sensitive. Even the tiniest bit of rift activity or alien tech within 500 mile will be detected. Whatever we're looking for is very good at concealing its tracks."

"Very…Spock." Rose laughed up at him handing her mug to Jack who just smiled happily – funny, she'd seen him smile more in the last few hours than in the last few days – and stood.

Slipping past the smiling Doctor with a light hand trailing across his arm, touching him just because she could, she moved over to the main monitor and took a look at some of the readings, not that she could make much sense of it.

She was still standing there a few seconds later when an ear splitting alarm sounded and red lights started flashing from overhead.

"Jack? What's that alarm for?" Rose backed away from the monitor in a slight panic.

"We've got an intruder." He appeared in front of her, staring at the screen, inputting commands. "Alien origin, but not the Doctor, the parameters are refined so that he doesn't show up as a threat." He broke off for a second. "That's weird."

The Doctor was suddenly right beside him, screwdriver in hand, staring at something Jack was pointing to on the screen. Rose's view was obscured by their backs and she took a step forward trying to see over their shoulders.

"What's weird?"

They both turned as one to face her, the look on both their faces slightly startling to her. Not quite as startling however as when the Doctor raised his arm, screwdriver glowing slightly and pointed directly at her face.

"What have you done with Rose?"


	12. Realisation

"**SEE YOU IN HELL"**

**Chapter 11: Realisation**

**A/N** - Just a quick reminder: I started this fic a couple of years ago, just after watching the season 2 finale. So, while there has been a slight reference to another companion in the Tardis, none of the events from seasons 3 or 4 are taken into account. Saying that - how freaking amazing was _Turn Left_?! Oh. My. God.

DISCLAIMER: There's no way I could have come up with the awesomeness that is Dr. Who. Dammit.

* * *

"Doctor?" The whispered name was all she could get out past the shock of having him threatening her, the hard look on his face leaving absolutely no doubt in her mind that he meant the threat.

A cocking noise sounded from beside him and dimly she registered Jack's gun being pointed at her beside the screwdriver. "Give her back to us."

"What? Doctor, it's me," steel eyes just glared at her so she turned to Jack. "Jack, please. It's me, Rose. I don't know what that machine says, but it _is_ me! Maybe it's malfunctioning or maybe it's picking up the void stuff."

She took a faltering step towards them, but stopped when the screwdriver was raised slightly higher and Jacks grip on his gun tightened.

"Oh you're clever. You're very, very clever." The Doctor studied her intently. "But I'm cleverer. Rose?"

"Doctor?" She was scared.

"I'm so sorry."

There was no time for her to ask what he was apologising for before he pressed a button on the sonic screwdriver and her legs crumpled beneath her and her world turned black.

* * *

The light wasn't particularly bright but it still hurt Rose's head when she slowly opened her eyes. Thankfully the noise of the alarm and flashes of red had stopped.

Groaning weakly, Rose hauled her body to a sitting position, the glass wall in front of her betraying the fact that she wasn't in the main command hub anymore.

"Hello?" She stood warily, looking around the small stone room she was in. Three dank brick walls and one of clear glass with several small holes in it. And it was cold. So cold that she could see her breath in gusts.

"I'm sorry I had to do that Rose."

At the Doctor's voice, she ran to the glass, peering out to see him standing slightly to one side, on the other side of the hallway beyond it.

"Doctor, please let me out."

"I can't. Not until we've figured out how to reverse what's been done to you." He sounded so solemn, his steady eyes sombre.

"Nothing's been done to me. I'm fine." She didn't understand how he could stand there and tell her there was something wrong with her. She would know if something had happened.

"Oh Rose. I'm going to get you out of here, I promise." Sad eyes turned thoughtful, "but first you've got to tell me how you got back to this world."

She paused, looking at his earnest face, "tell me what you think's wrong with me first." She trusted him, she really did, but the way he was acting was scaring her.

That sucking his teeth between his lips movement again, and he pushed himself away from the wall he was leaning slightly on and moved towards the glass.

"The Tardis locked onto alien activity not far from here. I've no idea which species it is but whoever they are they are extremely clever. They've been siphoning energy from the rift, massive amounts. But they've figured out a way of manipulating the effects so that they're felt in the worlds on the other side of the void instead of in this one.

"That's why Torchwood couldn't detect it. None of the ramifications will be felt in this world until all the rest of them are destroyed."

"Destroyed?" Rose prayed that she was jumping to the wrong conclusions, that the Doctor didn't mean that Pete's World…

"That's what would normally happen with the huge amount of damage they're doing to the rift, but when you fell into the void, something happened. Somehow the rift closed and you ended up here. Pete's World _is_ intact, but something happened to you. That's why I need to know how you got out of the void. If I know that I can figure out who it is and what they want from you. And then I can stop them."

The look in his eyes scared her slightly. The number of times she'd seen the Doctor this intense and this angry could be counted on one hand. It was the look that meant absolutely no mercy would be given because something close to the Doctor had been threatened. It was the look which reminded her who he was and what he could do. That he was alien and he was oh-so-powerful and she was his. His to save, his to protect. His to avenge.

It was the look more than the explanation that set her resolve and, haltingly, she started talking.

It was almost therapeutic, describing the horrific nothingness that she'd felt, the absolute terror of the void. And then the blue light.

"Blue light?" He interrupted. "Tell me more about this light, where did it come from?"

Rose hadn't really thought about the light before. She'd just dismissed it, not as important as the rest of the things that were happening to her.

"I don't know. It had gold streaks in it. I kinda figured it came from the extrapolator I was holding…" She trailed off to think it through more carefully, before realising she hadn't told him possibly one of the most important things. "I had all my memories back, Doctor. Even before the rift, I'd been dreaming about the Game Station and Jack."

A glance at his impassive face, expecting a comment he didn't give, before she closed her eyes and willed herself to remember everything as clearly as possible. Breaking through the mental blocks she'd thrown up to protect herself from having to relive everything.

"I knew what I'd done. All the stuff on the Game Station, the Daleks, the heart of the Tardis. I remembered the Bad Wolf." She felt a frown crease her forehead but carried on, "in the void, I was nothing, just a bunch of memories. And I thought about Jack, how it felt to bring him back to life and then I could see the blue.

"It was all around me in a split second. I didn't have time to be scared, just relieved there was something there. But then the gold light appeared." Rose took in a gasping breath. "The gold was me."

She opened her eyes wide at the realisation she'd just reached, startled to see the Doctor's face so close to hers, his hands pressed against the glass, mirroring her own stance.

"The blue light … I was threatened by it and the gold streaks came from me, trying to defend myself."

"The gold wasn't you, Rose. It was the Bad Wolf."

The Doctor took a step back, dragging his hands through his hair and muttering in an exact reconstruction of his actions in a stately home in 19th century Scotland, when trying to piece together seemingly random facts.

"The Bad Wolf. Think. Void manipulation, different dimensions. Think, think, think! All that power."

He stopped and looked right at her. "Power."

"What?" Rose didn't like the way he looked at her.

"Of course! I just thought it was the vortex, and Jack's so _wrong_, I just ignored it, tried to block it all out, but it all makes sense now."

"Tell me! _Is_ there something wrong with me Doctor?" Her eyes were streaming now, tears she hadn't thought she had left. She, too, backed away from the glass. If the Doctor was right, if there _was_ something wrong with her, she didn't want to risk being too close.

"Remember after I regenerated? I was giving off power, that power needed for the regeneration process merged with the power of the time vortex, drawing the Sycorax here.

I mustn't have taken the whole of the vortex from you. The Bad Wolf must have stopped me and hidden from me. The blue light picked it up when they were siphoning off the void energy. They knew you'd be an immense source of power, enough to keep them going for years. The Bad Wolf tried to protect itself, but some of it got in."

"The blue light's in me right now? Is it doing anything to me?" There were so many questions and all of a sudden Rose was so scared.

"I don't think the light itself can do anything, it's like a tracking device, but it's putting out a faint signature so its masters can find the source of the power. It hitched a lift inside you, too tiny to be picked up by Jack's machines but just alien enough to show up on the scanners boosted by the Tardis."

"Well what are you waiting for, get it out of me!" That was all Rose managed to get out before she realised that the gusts her breath made in the frigid air were blue.

"Doctor?"

Of course, he'd noticed it the exact same second she had.

"Oh no, you don't!" His screwdriver was pressed against the hinges of the glass.

It was going to take too long, instead of disappearing, each breath lingered in the air, growing darker and thicker incredibly quickly.

"Rose, don't let it take you," he didn't even look up from the hinges.

"Take me?" It was surrounding her now. "You said it couldn't do anything to me!"

"It's not just tracking you. Must have an active teleport for when it's threatened. Don't let it take you!"

It was getting hard to see through the deep blue clouds, but she heard the door give way just as the blue descended on her and stole her scream from her lips.

A/N2 - Next chapter's in the works.


End file.
